Sacha Goldberger is a photographer who relies on fine details to create an image. One of his recent exhibits in Paris, entitled “Super Flamands,” blends our expectations of Renaissance costuming with our knowledge of characters in popular culture: its all in the details.

The names of the portraits have been chosen to reflect how a superhero’s portrait might have been named during the Renaissance. See if you can guess to which superhero these names belong:

« Portrait of a masked man with a spider embroidered on his chest. »

« Pale young woman surrounded by animals. »

« Portrait of an officer in a black helmet. »

« Portait of a man wearing a gold armor. »

« Portrait of a very hairy man. »

« Portrait of a man wearing a S on his chest »

If you guessed Spiderman, Snow White, Darth Vader, C3P0, Chewbacca, and Superman, you were correct!

Check out Sacha Goldberger’s Facebook page to see the full collection. Here are some of the pictures from the collection:

The Departments of English, CMRS, and Drama are hosting the launch of the University of Saskatchewan’s digital application of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales on April 9th. In the South Studio of the Greystone Theatre, the culmination of several months’ work will be revealed to the university community. One of the exciting things about this digital edition is the visual representation of the text by Chaucer, the audio readings by Colin Gibbings, and a translation by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. I’ve seen the “app” in its infancy, and the process of putting the text together in all of its forms and then working through bugs, interface, and design, was an interesting process, even in those early stages. I would highly recommend going to the launch, just to see the project.

In the meantime, however, some of you may be wondering what a Python has to do with the Canterbury Tales. As a kid, I loved watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail (probably much to the distress of my friends’ parents), and I knew that the troupe were highly educated and highly intelligent, but I did not know that Terry Jones was a scholar of pre-modern history until recently.

For anyone who wants to know what brings Terry Jones to Saskatoon in his capacity as a scholar of Chaucer, here is some information straight from the Ministry of Silly Walks:

His first book was Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary (1980), a controversial critique of the current reading of The Knight’s Tale, which suggests that the eponymous character is less than a “parfit gentle knight,” and more of a bloodthirsty mercenary.

In 2003, he wrote Who Killed Chaucer? in which he argues that Chaucer’s proximity to King Richard the Second left the poet in dire straits when the king was deposed. In his review of Jones’ book for The Guardian, Jonathan Myerson describes the person of Thomas Arundel, and his importance in the latter part of Chaucer’s life:

The central plank of Jones’s theory is the 1399 coup which put Henry IV on the throne and Thomas Arundel back behind it. In fact, from the moment he enters the narrative, it’s clear that Arundel’s the one wearing the black cloak and riding the black horse … Arundel had grown fat, rich and powerful by holding a succession of bishoprics. Needing now to consolidate a usurper king, the last thing he could stomach was people saying the church was full of fat, rich and power-hungry hypocrites … So the last thing Arundel wanted, Jones argues, was more descriptions of rip-off churchmen. And yet here’s Chaucer, using his final masterwork to make everyone laugh at the pardoner who sells fake indulgences to poor congregations; at the summoner (a church court policeman, who probably is the pardoner’s significant other) demanding bribes from defendants or will-be-defendants-if-they-don’t-cough-up; at the monk spending all his time hunting; and at the friar, who should be penniless but is clearly a pampered, harp-strumming social climber. In fact, it’s arguable that the entirety of the Tales – with their gentle mockery of the fake piety of pilgrimages – is an assault on the “church commercial” which relied so heavily on income from pilgrims. (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/15/classics.highereducation)

Jones received an Emmy nomination in 2004 for “Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming” for his television series Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives.(It was followed up by book by the same name in 2007 published by BBC). Check out Episode 1 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg3YDN5gTX0

In the aptly named Terry Jones’ Barbarians (2006), Jones presented the cultural achievements of peoples conquered by theRoman Empire in a more positive light than Roman historians typically have, while criticising the Romans as the true “barbarians” who exploited and destroyed higher civilisations. Episode 1 of this series from BBC can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKGVqXznpNU

And of course, most recently, Jones has provided a translation of The Canterbury Tales for our homegrown mobile application. The launch on April 9th will likely include more information on Colin’s voice-work in creating an audio accompaniment, Dr Peter Robinson’s direction in the project, as well as all the rest of the people who have been involved in putting it together. Come to the South Studio of the Greystone Theatre at 4pm! Find out more here: http://artsandscience.usask.ca/english/news/event.php?newsid=4875.

Myerson, Jonathan. “Whodunnit? Jonathan Myerson is rapt in a Python’s coils of explanation as to the writer’s mysterious end in Who Murdered Chaucer? by Terry Jones et al.” Rev. of Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery, by Terry Jones, Robert Yeager, Terry Doran, Alan Fletcher and Jeanette D’Or. The Guardian Nov 2003. Online.

“The Wife of Bath Meets Brian’s Mum: World Premiere! New Work by Geoffrey Chaucer, with the assistance of Terry Jones.” Departments of English, CMRS, & Drama. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. 9 April 2015. Address.

Dr. Michael Scott is an Associate Professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick, and he recently announced that he will be releasing a new book in Spring 2016.

He takes a new approach to history, as he describes here:

This new book will give a truly connected perspective of the beginnings of the world we know today, taking readers on a journey around the ancient world as we look at civilization, politics, religion and war, from Greece to Italy, South America to China.

We live in a global and connected world. But that is not how we study history. Instead, we look at events situated in a particular time and place, isolated from their global contexts, leaving us with a disconnected sense of our past. This book, in contrast, seeks to crash through the disciplinary boundaries that have shackled the study of history, enabling the reader to connect up different strands of our human story and thereby to develop a more sophisticated sense of how our world has developed, and why it now exists as it does.

I think this is a great idea, but I also wonder about how anachronistic the idea of globalization is … How connected are the economies and ideologies in the classical period(s)? I am definitely looking forward to it!

See Michael Scott @: http://michaelscottweb.com/index.php/profile/

And check out his awesome online presence on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srslVsJ47KI

This Saturday, Comitatus (the CMRS student group at the University of Saskatchewan) will be hosting a Medieval Feast! The proceeds will be going towards the contingent of students who will be attending the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan!

Here’s the link to the Medieval Feast:

https://www.facebook.com/events/424434334390869/

And here’s the link to the conference:

http://wmich.edu/medieval/congress/

Congress takes place from May 14 to 17th. Check out our Facebook group, “CMRS at the U of S” for more information about Comitatus events.

Dr Mary Beard, who specializes in Classics at Cambridge, writes a delightful blog full of eclectic facts and interesting details, ranging from her study of Classics to even purchasing new vehicles. She is perceptive and interesting, and what’s more, she knows what gets people – all kinds of people – thinking about studying the Classics. She is especially adept at taking details of everyday life from the past and making them applicable for a contemporary audience.

Take this article, for example: in a course on “Roman Popular Culture” (which is just awesome in and of itself), one of her students presented her with this picture:

“A pig, friend to everybody /a young four-footed one /here I lay”

This picture is puzzling for Beard; as she says, “Ok, so my question is, what kind of thing is this. If it is a spoof, like Testamentum Porcelli and of that genre, then it is a very expensive one, all reasonably inscribed with a not-bottom-of-the-range bit of relief sculpture. But does it make any sense to be ‘real’?”

She further goes on to say that an epitaph that glorifies the animal would make more sense for a beloved horse. A pig, on the other hand, suggests a parody. (Maybe this is what people of the future will say about lolcats? “They largely seem to be making fun of the animal, but if that’s the case, why are cheezburger-eating cats so prominent?” Or so the conversation goes in my imagination).

According to Sotheby’s International Realty, a Medieval castle has just gone on the market; for a mere $29 million USD, this castle in Tuscany can be yours, too.

The listing says that the property was built in the 12th century, and held through much of the 15th Century by the Piccolomini family (whose other claim to fame is producing two popes: Pius II and Pius III).

The scholarly importance of the property is less certain; while it was heavily redecorated in the 18th century, it supposedly maintains much of its original architecture. The most interesting part about the property is that its original owners are almost completely unknown… sounds like a fun mystery to me!

Check out the official listing here: http://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/detail/180-l-2945-z84nps/glamorous-medieval-castle-near-siena-siena-si-53011

I recently read a review of Writing on the wall: Social Media – the first 2000 years by Tom Standage, which is about the concept of a social circle of friends and colleagues that gathers to share information. His premise is that the social media we know of today has its origins in ancient times. Maria Popova writes in “Cicero’s Web: How Social Media Was Born in Ancient Rome” that the predecessor of our current understanding of social media obviously looked different, but was “analogous to anything we see on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and platforms we’re yet to imagine.” (Check out Popova’s review at: http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/10/25/writing-on-the-wall-social-media-first-2000-years/). In Cicero’s time, the medium was “papyrus scrolls passed around by hand,” and it was very much human-powered, which is the essence of how social media works. What struck me most about Standage, however, was what I discovered when I looked up the text in my university library: I discovered that Standage is no stranger to providing a historical context to current concerns and thought processes. Several of his books are accounts of items of daily significance, and their evolution in history. As a result, his books are deeply engaging to a non-scholarly audience, but equally of interest to any scholar who is interested in pre-modern history.

In 2006, Standage released a book called A History of the World in Six Glasses, which outlines the way certain common and well-known beverages have both influenced and been influenced by the passage of time. He begins with the discussion of beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt (9) and then goes on to the place of wine in Greece and Rome (43). He discusses spirits and colonization (93), as well as the British Empire’s relationship with tea (175). According to Standage, coffee has two time periods of note: during the age of reason (133) and slightly later, in internet coffeehouses (151). Finally, he describes Coke as “globalization in a bottle” (250). Our correlations of beverages and historical periods are more than just vague inclinations: beverages have a unique relevance to the history of western civilization.

Six Glasses is engaging because it uses recognizable, common objects to connect his audience to history. The remoteness of Mesopotamia is perceived to be less distant because this early civilization consumed this similar product. Similarly, we can understand the superficiality of colonization in a new light with the discussion of both coffee and tea. Even young children are aware of the ubiquity of Coke; in fact, the general populace may very well be “hooked” by the initial list: what do Coke commercials in Japan have to do with beer in Ancient Egypt? Well, it turns out that they have everything to do with each other, and the non-academic audience is inexorably pulled into the framing of history which is both relevant and relatable.

In An Edible History of Humanity (2009), Standage takes a very similar approach; his chapters discuss food as it passes through different periods in western civilization. In chronological order, he lays out the beginnings of farming (3) – the movement from a hunter-gatherer society – and the relationship between food and power (31). Most reasonably well-read university students can discuss the relationship between industrialization (107) and colonization (85), but across two chapters of the text, Standage outlines how this relationship between supply and demand creates certain needs for food production. His final chapters are about the current problems in distribution and the developing world.

In contrast with the earlier text, An Edible History begins with a focus on western civilization in order to capture the reader’s attention, but ends by changing the perspective. Whereas Coke at the end of Standage’s text is still a recognizably American product (and this knowledge is appealing to a western-centred audience), the problem of distribution of food is not a western concern. This shift in focus places more imperative on the audience to call for social change. The audience who reads An Edible History likely picks up this book for the entertainment value of learning history through a commonly-known object, but they end up putting it down with a greater sense of the world as it is now, and not just as they know it.

This idea of taking the object – whether it be food or beverage – is carried on into Standage’s recent text, Writing on the Wall. Most people have a vague understanding of social media, and at the very least how social media is changing their lives in regards to information and social structures. Like the Coke example in the earlier text, social media is the hook that brings this audience to the book. While I have no academically- supported psychological understanding of what draws people to want to know about their personal histories, it is self-evident (to me, at least) that people want to know the history of the items, materials, and ideas that affect them the most.

With that in mind, I would propose a formula to engaging the modern audience in pre-modern history:

Find an object or idea that has its roots in a pre-modern civilization.

Trace the original object to the one in the present.

Suggest how the object was both created by the people of its time period, but also influenced those people.

Hypothesize ways that the historic world may have been different without that object.

Demonstrate a trajectory between the historic time and the present time; the trick is to create a cognitive relationship between the past and the present through the person’s relationship to the object.

Make suggestions for the future of that object: How will it affect the lives of the people using it?

For further reading, please read Popova’s article at brainpickings.com, check out Tom Standage’s texts at your local library. Other texts that focus on particular items: Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History or Iain Gately’s Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol.

Works Cited:

Gately, Iain. Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol. New York: Gotham, 2009. Print.

On February 26th, the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria – most media sites now refer to them by an acronym: “ISIS” – released a video of one of their most recent attacks on the people of the Middle East: the reckless destruction of several priceless artifacts in the Mosul museum in Iraq. ISIS has committed worse crimes in their pursuit for power and political dominance: their merciless killing and displacement of thousands of people is obviously heinous (The Economist 7 March 2015). But one of the ways that you destroy a people is not just limited to its populace, but extends to its culture, its history, and it art.

As divided as we might think ourselves from this dilemma – given that we are in North America – this attack on historical artifacts should concern all of us. There is value in these pieces to so many different types of scholars: not just archaeologists and anthropologists, but historians, theologists, and others in a variety of fields, including political science and religious studies. Even artists, writers, journalists, and creative thinkers should see the value in these items: What do these priceless pieces tell us about the history of these people, their beliefs, thoughts and customs? How do these pieces fit within the larger collection of works that are historically important? What does their wanton destruction mean to the Iraqi people right now? Philosophically, how does the destruction of these statues and replicas fit within the overall scheme of the Islamic State? Is there enough left in records, drawings, and photographs for artisans to recreate what was lost?

These are just a few of the many questions that make the careless destruction in Mosul a question of concern for many people. At the same time, and in all parts of the world, humanities scholars are asked to provide positive proofs of the relevancy of their existence … and yet, here is that proof in front of us, ironically delivered by extremists: the way to break the spirit of a people is through the destruction of their identity, right down to their art, their history, and every iota of culture. Disguising their destruction as an act of righteousness in the name of religion (to “destroy idols,” of course), they have discovered that one way to consciously uproot a group of people is to attack the monuments to their culture. Art, history, culture, and literature all inherently have value because of what happens to a civilization when those aspects of life are destroyed, forgotten, or dismissed.

The only true question of our relevance as humanities scholars is this: What can we do to stand in the way of such wanton destruction?